Ball & Chain (Cut & Run 8)

“Ty,” Zane finally whispered against his lips. His fingers dug into the muscles of Ty’s thighs.

“I can’t believe you convinced me to come out here with you,” Ty said between kisses. He lifted up onto his knees, letting Zane guide him back down. The head of Zane’s c**k pushed at him demandingly. After the last several weeks of getting reacquainted, it would have been an easy entry. Ty lifted his face up to the sky, humming and sighing.

“Can we do this without lube?” Zane asked. His voice was strained, and every muscle in his body was hard and tight, no longer relaxed by the waters of the hot spring. “More importantly, should we do this in a mineral spring?”

“Fine time to ask now,” Ty grunted. He lowered himself back into Zane’s lap, dragging his own c**k against Zane’s as he sat. “What’s wrong with mineral springs?”

“Don’t some of them have bacteria in them?”

“I’m getting out!” Ty shouted, trying to sound dismayed, but laughing too hard to pull it off.

Zane grabbed at him as he moved away, tackling him. They both managed to keep their heads above water, but Ty lost his footing. He wrapped around Zane to stay afloat, and he kissed him hungrily to combat Zane’s next attack. Zane shoved him toward the other side of the spring, slamming him against the rock wall and holding him pinned there as their kiss turned devouring, consuming.

Ty wrapped his legs around Zane, groaning as Zane’s hard c**k threatened to breach him again. He flailed, reaching out for a handhold. He fingers fell on cool skin.

He jerked away, gasping and shoving Zane away from their kiss. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted.

“What?” Zane cried. He pushed away, obviously thinking he’d hurt Ty or something had triggered a flashback.

But Ty’s eyes had mostly adjusted in the moonlight, and he could make out the pale skin of a leg and bare foot against the dark underbrush. When Zane saw it, he scrambled toward their clothing, probably trying to reach one of their phones for the flashlight app. Ty pushed himself up onto the lip of the edge of the hot spring and reached for the foot again, tugging at it. He would have prayed it was a drunk bridesmaid, but he already knew he would be wrong about that.

When Zane got the light and shone it on the bushes, Ty realized he’d been half-right. It was definitely a bridesmaid.

Ty hesitated to knock on Nick and Kelly’s door for so long that Zane reached up and knocked for him. Ty glared at him until he heard the lock thrown and the door creaked open.

Kelly’s face was puffy from sleep. He was wearing just a pair of sleep bottoms, no shirt, and he had Nick’s gun in his hand. He wasn’t even trying to hide it.

“What?” he croaked.

“Another body’s shown up,” Ty said quietly.

Kelly merely stared at him, then stepped aside and gestured for him to come in.

A lamp beside the bed gave off a dim glow, and Nick sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes with one hand.

Kelly crawled back in beside him, leaving Ty and Zane standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed with nowhere to sit. Nick waved a hand at them, and Zane shrugged and crawled onto the end of the bed, sitting cross-legged like they were at a slumber party. Ty followed suit because he was past the stage of giving a f**k.

Ty showed his phone with the picture of the victim to Nick. “You recognize her?”

Nick took the phone, nodding and frowning. “That’s the maid of honor.”

Ty’s stomach dropped. He was going to have to tell Livi that her best friend had been murdered at her wedding.

“Her name was Nikki . . . something. Webb. West. No, it’s Webb.” Nick still sounded half-asleep. Ty had little doubt that Kelly had given him something to make him rest.

Ty glanced up at him, then down at the photo again, feeling sick. Notifying family of victims wasn’t normally a part of his job. Notifying his own family of deaths definitely wasn’t in his resume.

“Do you want me to tell them?” Nick asked softly. “I’ve got some practice with it.”

Ty glanced around at the three of them. All of them were frowning sympathetically at him. “No,” he said with difficulty. “Thanks, but . . . no, I’ll do it.”

Nick nodded. He and Kelly shared a worried scowl, then Kelly nodded. They were communicating silently, and it bothered Ty. Kelly and Nick had always been able to do that, though, which told Ty that he just needed to get a f**king grip here. Nick took a deep breath. “We’ve got another problem.”

“A bigger problem than a dead maid of honor?” Zane asked, incredulous and full of dread.

Nick shrugged. “Debatable, but . . . yeah, probably.”

“When we got back from the Creepy Hollow woods, I was cleaning Nick’s back up,” Kelly started.

Ty raised a hand. “If this is a sex story, I’d like to take a pass.”

“It’s not,” Nick assured him. There was no humor in his voice. “I thought I’d hit something sharp in the path when I fell, but when Doc got a look at it, we realized . . . well, take a look,” he said. Then he pulled his shirt up, twisting so Ty and Zane could see his back.

A long, narrow welt covered him from side to side, starting around chest height and then streaking over his shoulder blade and the Celtic cross tattoo along his spine to disappear into the large eagle, globe, and anchor tattoo on his shoulder.

Zane cupped a hand over his mouth, leaning his arm on his knee. Kelly’s foot kicked Ty from under the covers, and he murmured an apology as he tried to get comfortable. Ty barely heard him. “That’s a graze,” he blurted.

Nick nodded.

“Nick, that’s a bullet graze.”

“Yes,” Nick said, voice calm. He turned and let his shirt loose, shaking his shoulders so the material would settle. “We were right. Those were silenced shots we heard.”

Chapter 8

Breakfast the next morning was late in coming, mostly because no one had thought to prepare it.

Mara took over, heading down to see what she could do to cook for thirty people. As soon as she’d announced she was going to the kitchen, Zane and Nick both hustled after her, claiming they would help.

Ty knew they were going more to protect her than to use their considerable combined culinary skills. He appreciated that both men had taken responsibility for protecting his mother just as quickly as he would have.

Ty spent the morning in Deuce and Livi’s room, bouncing Amelia on his knee and breaking the news of Nikki Webb’s murder.